Opinion

The Power Of Positive Difference: Dr. Obadiah Mailafia And His Nigeria

Published

3 years ago

August 10, 2021

NewTimes

Professor Ademola Dasylva At 70: A Labourer In The Vineyard

By
Toyin Falola

Having intellectual capacity is associated with some people who have dedicated their time to the pursuit of knowledge, part of a process of building human capacity, evidence that efforts have been concentrated on something tangible. However, no matter how outstanding an individual is, having intellectual capacity does not equal being intellectually versatile. Intellectual versatility, matched with productivity, is a rare accomplishment.

Dr. Obadiah Mailafia remains one of the shiniest individuals who has committed himself to different tasks, demonstrating versatility and productivity. He has a multidisciplinary background in international relations, political science, development economics, and public administration. Across these fields, he has made outstanding contributions that reflect his continuous engagement in various fields. At the economic and finance fronts, he has participated in several programs where he lends his intelligence to promote reasonable collective objectives. For example, as the Chief Economist in the Planning and Budgeting Department of the African Development Bank (AfDB), this bright mind has initiated awe-inspiring ideas and strategies that artfully launched the institution to an enviable position.

Dr. Mailafia made a difference with the levels of programs and projects that he initiated at AfDB, bearing in mind the cardinality of the institution to the progress of the continent, which has also given the AfDB the marks of excellence. It is by no coincidence that his services are usually sought after in various other areas where he shines brilliantly and without pressure.

Assuredly, when Dr. Mailafia has committed himself to the course of progress, not many people can match his level of concentration and focus. Between 2010 and 2015, Dr. Mailafia served as the Chef de Cabinet of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, Brussels, where he essentially coordinated different projects that facilitated the organization’s transformation. Serving as the arrowhead of very tasking departments in ACP, this eclectic man made outstanding contributions that are not easy to undermine. For example, while he served as the most senior adviser to the secretary-general, he arranged many diplomatic relationships with external bodies, especially the European Union (EU), with whom they eventually collaborated to enhance programs that would bring desirable outcomes.

Apart from establishing the relationship between ACP and the EU, he also negotiated on behalf of ACP with international financial institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank. During all these, he was able to accomplish incredible feats, and his revolutionary contributions are in public memory. Dr. Mailafia has been very useful to humanity, and his efforts are testaments of this conclusion.

Dr. Obadiah Mailafia has a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics, Sociology, and Politics, which is no ordinary feat that can be disregarded. His ability to provide progressive ideas shines forth through the academic works and research reflected in his papers and other intellectual engagements. More importantly, his knowledge reverberates through all of his engagements, and it considerably influences how he approaches issues and the methodologies he employs to get results.

To understand the significance of the knowledge acquired in this direction, his success records in finance and economics cannot be underrated. For example, while working as the deputy to the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, several initiatives and programs that substantially impacted the nation’s economy were credited to Dr. Mailafia. It bears reiteration that working as a deputy in an organization involves political participation because administrative skills are usually required for the successful management of people and enterprise.

The Power Of Positive Difference: Dr. Obadiah Mailafia And His Nigeria

Former CBN Deputy Governor, Dr. Obadiah Mailafia

As an academic, Dr. Mailafia has made cutting-edge professional accomplishments, and there are numerous books and papers credited to his name. A cursory look at these intellectual productions would reveal a grounded understanding of economic issues and the various other disciplines with which he is associated. Consider, for instance, that he produced works that reflect contemporary global politics; we cannot deny him the accolades deserving of his feats, among many other things.

His paper, “The New Scramble for Africa: China, India and Turkey as New Actors in Africa,” gives a critical evaluation of the socioeconomic and sociopolitical trajectory of Africa about how they have succumbed to the pressure of colonizing forces; not from their erstwhile imperialists from Europe but from different players who are making headway in Asian countries. Evident from his critical assessment of the African situation is the exposition of the inherent rot that has percolated contemporary African politics and permeated all their institutional establishments.

Since greed and the quest for personal aggrandizement have overtaken the desire to lead by example, the resources domiciled in the African continent have been diverted to the advantage of the new “colonial lords,” namely China, Turkey, India, among others.
Intellectuals like Dr. Mailafia are exceptionally foresighted and can predict future actions by looking at current ideas and issues. It takes a critical mind to understand the underlying politics that these Asian countries are playing with the African continent. Many developed countries consider Africa indispensable to their economic and financial transformations because the continent is blessed with numerous natural resources and sufficient human resources that can translate all unrefined resources to significant results. China’s role in the continent is therefore significant and an indication that they may be on a long journey towards the re-colonization of Africa.

Unlike the European Scramble for Africa of the late nineteenth century, the contemporary scramble by these countries is not as organized as we have in all other situations. Their diplomatic relations with countries in Africa is informed by the attraction they get from the people themselves. This means that unlike the previous scramble by the Europeans, this contemporary scramble is based on mutual concession. Therefore, the paper is an indictment of the political class in Africa who are not only blind-sighted because of their greed but who have also refused to see how their lack of political will has impeded the continent from achieving its potential.

Despite his immersion in academic and maybe political activities, Dr. Mailafia does not lose touch with reality and current trends. In 2019, he produced another trailblazing intellectual work called “Global Megatrends and Nigeria’s Future,” where he demonstrated his understanding of the trendy issues and how they affect Nigerians and their future. Without dragging it, the wake of globalization has seen an unprecedented increase in technological innovations that created a parallel world where people of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds interact and exchange ideas. Because the internet, which is a byproduct of this technological innovation, has the capacity to welcome netizens in their great numbers, the exchange of cultural values and traditions has become extremely easy.

This means that people now have direct access to other people’s cultural traditions and the lack of appropriate means of sieving the cultures which they come in contact with, to understand aspects of it that are very encouraging, and know the areas that are detrimental to their collective cultural safety, now allow them to accommodate these different cultures. Cultural osmosis, therefore, is the foundation for a different identity that has permeated the world today.

From this sudden transformation, every civilization has its positive additions and its shares of negative consequences. For many African countries, the cultural clash that they experienced has become the reason for their shift in traditional engagements. Africans’ virtues have become so complex that they find it challenging to locate their traditional identity. At the political front, options are so surplus that even the political leaders continue to mix political philosophies in their leadership assignments. This is the era when democratic leaders, without respect for democratic ethos, would use their positions of power to witch-hunt people considered an impediment to their ambitions.

In the same way, the increase in obscene engagements cannot be overemphasized, especially in the wake of the internet lifestyle. Sadly, as Dr. Mailafia has noted, the underlying downside of the internet age is the proliferation of a morally condemnable engagement that manifests in internet fraud, cyberbullying, cyber criminality, and others. It has eaten deep into the fabric of the African world and caused the quick deceleration of moral principles. What then would be the African future, considering the fact that this trend continues? These are the issues Dr. Mailafia addresses in the paper.

We talk about versatility and productiveness concerning Dr. Mailafia, not because he demonstrates unparalleled zeal for making a difference, but because there are growing numbers of literature that he publishes even in the current time, without losing his focus on what matters. He has given numerous lectures, devised various systems, and identified different ways through which humanity would flourish, and Nigeria would become the cynosure of all eyes. It is more rewarding that this bright scholar has dissected challenges facing Nigeria at the economic front and has provided state-of-the-art solutions that would facilitate instant upward and speedy mobility when adopted.

For instance, a compelling academic work credited to him looks at the country’s problems and how they have defied solutions in recent years. Considering that he is not unfamiliar with how the world is evolving, he has provided appropriate strategies for rejuvenating the country’s dying economy. The paper, titled “Towards the Post-Oil Economy in Nigeria: Imperatives of Diversification for Sustainable Development,” gives a scientific explanation to the myriad of economic challenges facing the country, using his experience to predict the possible ways of salvaging the country from imminent doom.

In the paper mentioned above, Dr. Mailafia posits that the snail pace of Nigeria’s development is informed by the obstinacy of Nigerian leaders who are mono-dependent on oil. The obsessive concentration on oil as the source of income for the Nigerian government has not only reduced the creativity of the country to devise alternative measures of standing up to the fast-growing global economic system but has also permeated the social bloodstream of the people who now have great disrespect for diversity and plurality, especially in their financial and economic lifestyles.

At the government level, the excessive concentration on oil has killed the urge to explore limitless opportunities that abound in other sectors of the economy. For example, the agricultural industry has suffered careless abandonment from the government since the oil sector has proven itself reliable in generating income. In essence, the country, which used to export agricultural products in the years of old, does not have diversity to cling on today that can be said to be produced internally. Therefore, this has exposed the consumerist and import-dependent culture of the country.

Meanwhile, the high dependence on products that are made from other civilizations reduces the worth of their values. More and more, the country is going down at a speed that has not been known hitherto. The paper, therefore, suggests that the consequence of the nation’s overdependence on oil is devastating. At the individual level, the potential of the people is made the sacrifice because the country has chosen to depend exclusively on oil as its source of income. People have the challenge of getting the right audience for their intellectual and professional services because they have not gained the required attention from their political leaders, who appear to be unbothered by the situation of things.

Since there is no international value for the agricultural industry in the country because the people do not export products that are needed in other places, the youths are not motivated to consider a career in mechanized farming. Instead, they make themselves available for all manner of morally reprehensible engagements that soil their names and the nation’s reputation. This awareness inspired Dr. Mailafia to consider pursuing the agitation for the future that does not centralize oil as the mainstay of its economy. There is a level of truth to his conclusion and argument.

Opinion

Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State

Published

4 hours ago

December 22, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.

(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.

From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.

However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.

First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.

Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.

No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.

If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.

To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.

The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

Opinion

Fear Of Witchcraft And Politics In Zambia

Published

1 day ago

December 21, 2024

NewTimes

Witch Burning, Impunity And Abuses Linked to Witchcraft Beliefs In Benue State

Dr Leo Igwe

By Leo Igwe

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.

This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.

Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?

The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.

Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.

In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.

Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!

Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

Opinion

Burning Issues: (FCT Minister And Paulosa) (2)

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

The other burning issue, apart from Farotimi and Babalola’s, which I wish to take a look at – and which I am taking a look at now – relates to what is happening in our capital territory. What is this burning issue – which our human rightists and civil society organisations and personages are surprisingly and un-satisfactorily not inclined to focus attention on and examine as they should? I may be wrong, but it surely seems to me that this issue, this burning issue, which is of more importance than Farotimi and Babalola’s – which has been given undue adulation – is deliberately being neglected and depreciated by proclaimers and heroes and heroines of human rights, justice, equity and equality of rights in your country my country our country. Why, why, why and why, why, why? Anyone who has any iota of patriotic sensibility, feeling and judgment well watered and buttressed by a very great influence upon his or her critical judgment will keep on asking the question I am asking.

Mr. Nyesom Wike, as almost everybody who can read and write a little knows, is the current minister of your, my and our Federal Capital Territory. His post or office is akin to that of a governor of a state. As the immediate past governor of Rivers State who was drafted, after his two terms there expired, to continue in the FCT as its new minister-governor or governor-minister under the auspices of a party he is not a true member of, Mr. Wike cannot but be seen as a lucky man. He is in every possible and impossible way. Minister-Governor Wike is a lucky man and a very fortunate one indeed. No former governor of Rivers State (or of any Nigerian state), as far as I know, has achieved what the famed political rouser of rabbles has achieved in one short gubernatorial life-time, and at a relatively young and fertile age. His dual achievement with and in two different political parties at this delicate point of Nigerian politics indicates to our politicians and us all that there is always time for a reminder that there are ready-made high rewards for arch-angels of betrayals. And Mr. Wike may go down in Rivers and Nigerian history as both an arch-angel and an emperor of betrayal of us all if we attempt to indicate what I have defined here as his dual achievement.

We can roughly divide, briefly, Wike’s political development into two periods. During the first, excluding his lower political positions before he became the governor of Rivers State, he quickly adapted his style to that of an emperor who became a rabble-rouser of rabble-rousers whose gubernatorial efficiency moved from stiffness to stiffness. He did not at any time feel that he needed suppleness to govern Rivers State. “Let the heavens fall if they must fall!” We are not there yet in this attempted analysis of the stiff-hearted and stiff-minded one. True? But he is already demonstrating this characteristic in Abuja. False? Judge and give the answer yourself.

Even after he left Rivers State a short while ago as governor, he is still trying to control happenings there to the political discomfiture of his hand-picked successor, his erstwhile “boy” and “son” – with whom he has fallen out. As the minister-governor or governor-minister of the FCT, Wike is occupied with the other taste of the emperor-juggernaut formulator – doing the work of two key political masters in one room and desk of political jugglery. Since his appearance in the FCT, minister-governor or governor-minister Wike has allegedly attempted to recover or transform for Abuja what is not traditionally or socially Abuja’s, for example, the city’s social idiom and landscape and terrain as well as its environs. In doing this he sometimes over-steps his bounds and mark of human/inhuman decency/indecency and psychological understanding of human nature, if you follow well what I am saying; he has so far become at best not really better than a typical pedestrian Nigerian lawyer and officer of political power: in his explorations so far in the Federal Capital Territory we have come to the realization, as T. S. Eliot would say, that “it is so often true that only by going too far can we find out how far we can go.” But one has to be a very negatively obstinate and self-serving emperor and a thorough-bred arch-angel of betrayal of the people and masses to justify such perilous and perfidious expeditions and adventures.

Last week, I saw on Arise Television “The Morning Show” Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, the dutiful widow of the late Nigerian supreme patriot and soldier, Colonel Ogbebor (of Benin stock) battling, so to say, to wrest the legacy of her late husband from the tight grip of the adventurous FCT minister-governor who has registered his name and signature in the hearts and consciousness of the people as the depriver of their possessions. The three anchors of “The Morning Show” were in their respective ways splendid in their structures of remarks and questions to Chief (Mrs.) Rita Lori-Ogbebor whom I have had occasions in times past to call patriotically Rita A-K 47 on account of her natural right to fire her beautiful tongue at any person, usually an enemy, of just actions. When she made the case she made to protect the estate of Paulosa Nigeria Limited, her late husband’s aforesaid legacy in the FCT, she was in her natural territory, habitat and element where even at age eighty-four, she never ever loses her stability – although she unusually restrained herself in the Arise Television appearance. Dr. Reuben Abati, Rufai Oseni, and Ayo Mairo-Ese clearly explored seriously but delightfully the mind of the mother-hen of Warri – my other coinage and appellation I gave her in my poetry. Her “The Morning Show” appearance enabled me to see the poignant cry de profundis of the FCT inhabitants whose property and residences in different guises have been demolished. She did not say anything that was out of joint. She spoke and came out as a mother, protector and symbol of the people who have suffered – and are suffering – from the state of affliction and anguish Wike’s demolitions have placed – and are placing – the people.

Ojy Okpe in her delicious and delectable “What is Trending” slot on the same show, showed without exaggeration but with further elaboration what people in and outside Abuja/FCT think of the mighty Wike’s demolitions, a burning issue that the Senate has asked “Let Heaven Fall” minister-governor Wike to halt as the committee the Senate set up on the issue starts its work. Of course, we cannot but assume that Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, Mrs. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as well as Mrs. Ireti Kingigbe, the senator representing the FCT in the Senate and other patriotic senators diligently did what they did on the floor of the Senate when the burning issue was tabled for debate with the gracious understanding and authorization of the Senate President.

I need to state further that the “The Morning Show” anchors did well and extremely so by giving the minister-governor the opportunity to air his anti-Paulosa story. His senior special assistant on public communication and social media, Mr. Olalere Olayinka, stood in for him. After he gave the reasons for the clamp-down, his responses to the questions the anchors put to him followed the usual pattern of denials by artificial men in power – denials that they always use to intimidate and betray the people. In fact, Mr. Olayinka’s ploy to ride easily over our dear Rufai Oseni, a wholesome representative of the deprived, that the chap (or is it guy?) and his boss always employ their colloquial speeches and remarks to dishonor, failed. Yes, the ploy failed woefully. In stanza after stanza of the exchanges between Mr. Olayinka and the Arise anchors, he deteriorated – and his deterioration was hall-marked when he unwittingly revealed that the Paulosa land had been acquired by his minister-governor’s close cohort, an act that was nothing short of gross abuse of power and authority.

Because the Senate is already using its authority, power and privilege to resolve the burning issue, hopefully, in a way that the late Colonel Ogbebor’s legacy and family will not be subjected to any kind of degradation, I will utter no more words for now. I trust, however, that the liberties the Senate is taking – or has taken – are for the sake of order to favour the down-trodden.

As for the minister-governor, the PDP emperor at large, here is an immortal quote from Marcus Aurelius, the magnificent and authentic Roman Emperor and philosopher (A.D. 121-180): “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” You lose nothing by giving us a slice of your humanity by your right acts and correct words. Everything changes and passes. Be humane as a human being.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.